Thoroughbred® worked with Eastern Engineering Supply, Inc. to integrate salesforce.com CRM into Solution-IV®. Eastern now uses Salesforce for all customer contact, customer history, notes, call-back information and more through Salesforce CRM. This system is now available to any Solution-IV customer as well as customizations for non-Solution-IV systems that Thoroughbred can assist in integrating. A salesforce.com consultant will be required.

Tony Dargo, Director of Sales and Technology, Eastern Engineering Supply, Inc., Indianapolis, IN, reports the following:

From a Sales Manager perspective or as a CEO of your organization, managing and forecasting sales and sales personnel is one of the most difficult tasks. In the reprographics industry, we've been challenged even more so with a changing business climate. The business model has changed, our clientele has changed and we have been forced to change. Working smarter and being more efficient was our elected path of combating these challenges at our organization. We began by revamping our Sales program, hiring sales staff and integrating a CRM package with our Solution-IV accounting/billing systems.

Thoroughbred assisted our company with integrating Salesforce with Solution-IV. Our goal was to maximize our potential Sales. One year later the difference is remarkable. Previously our sales reps used spreadsheets and email to coordinate and report their daily activities. When we lost a seasoned sales rep the company lost their knowledge because we didn't have a measurable way of tracking and reporting. It is impossible to measure the amount of business our company has lost over the years from an inadequate tracking and reporting tool.

Knowing when a competitor's lease expires and what type of equipment they have is invaluable for an organization our size. In the past a sales rep would have to research to find this information. If we were lucky it could be found through an email and if we were really lucky it would be documented on a spreadsheet. Salesforce streamlines the procedure because the information is now stored on the cloud and triggers are set when this data is relative to the rep and the customer.

With the integration of Salesforce and our Thoroughbred Solution-IV accounting system, the benefits were exponential. Invoice history, most recent service calls, meter readings, billings, meter averages, overages and other vital metrics are made available and relayed through graphs and reports. In 10-20 seconds a representative can have a 1-year snapshot of a client from the field.

Cold calls are now more relevant because the rep is going in with current data and a plan. In the end, a good rep will turn that knowledge into opportunities and more sales. We're now able to report on sales by industry, by machine type, manufacturer, acquisition method including purchase, lease, rental or CPC. Knowing where our company is growing, what billing codes are most profitable and tracking sales is without question the most important aspects of this integration. Being able to break these sales down by territory, sales rep and by item type enables management to guide sales efforts rather than reacting to them as we've done in the past.

We are now in the stage of forecasting and establishing key performance indicators for our sales and service groups. Knowing how many units we'll likely sell in the next 30 to 90 days is now predictable. Being able to identify opportunities that haven't had a demo or those accounts that have received a final proposal are easily identified. This oversight and measure can be done at home on the couch while you and your spouse our watching the latest episode of Deadliest Catch.

In fact, as a Sales Manager I find myself using the tool at all times throughout the day and can't imagine a sales department running efficiently without it. The tool allows management to identify representatives that are getting hung up and not advancing the sale. In closing, the integration of Thoroughbred's Solution-IV and salesforce.com has allowed our company to report on current revenue streams in only ways that a quality CRM program can provide and it is providing the means and methods of predicting future sales which are vital for the future of our business.

We thank Thoroughbred for working so closely with The SMB Help Desk, Inc., our salesforce.com consultants, for making this project so successful.

Tony Dargo, CSI, CDT | Director of Sales and Technology

If you are interested in exploring the Salesforce-Solution-IV integration, click here and contact us for more details.

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